Marry or Burn (22 page)

Mr. Lofgren got to the door and there was a kind of scuffle in the hallway. Gabe could hear his mother's voice, embarrassed, low. “Carl!”

“Hiya!” she said coming in, still in her coat, smoothing herself. She bent over the rocking chair and cupped Gabe's face in her cold hands before she even looked down at the baby, who had gone to sleep again, to his surprise, on his stiffening arm. “How did it go today?”

“Great,” he said.

“Lars had a little fall,” Mr. Lofgren said, behind her.

“A fall?” She turned slowly. Her lips had gone pale. Gabe saw them look at each other.

So one was not all she ever needed. Or if it was, it was this one. “It wasn't me,” Gabe said.

“No, sweetheart. No. What happened?”

Mr. Lofgren said, “He fell off the couch.”

Gabe waited but Lofgren said no more. Gabe said, “It wasn't me.”

“Did anybody say it was you?” His mother smiled at him, still breathing fast. “He's OK, isn't he? He looks as funny as ever, don't you, Funny? At least he didn't fall off
that
. The Leaning Tower.” She and Mr. Lofgren smiled at the big chair in a stupid way.

Then Mr. Lofgren said, as if suddenly remembering, “It was my fault.” He left it like that. It sounded as if he were covering up for somebody.

She lifted the baby away from Gabe. “Oh, I hurt. Oh, it's too long to go,” she said to Mr. Lofgren, who sank back in the big chair while she undid her buttons. “Hey!” she cried, right away. “Oh, Carl. Oh. Here we go, feel this. A tooth.” She pressed the baby's top lip open and made a ticking sound with her fingernail.

Gabe went into the back to his room and took his guitar out of the closet. He sat down on the bed and played a few chords. He had had a hard time getting it in tune. And then the drug affected his fingering. Now he set himself to tune it properly. He couldn't be sure but he thought his tuning ear was off.

After a long time, he heard the baby again and he got up and went back in. The baby sat propped with cushions on the rug, beating the air with his hands and letting out hoarse squawks. In the kitchen his mother was already chopping something and singing. “‘
Well it's Saturday night
,
You're all dressed up in blue.
'” She stopped and called, “Gabe, can you come in here?” Mr. Lofgren, sitting at the table grading papers, caught his arm as he passed.

“Would you listen to that? Doesn't have a dime, her life's a
mess, work is screwed. She's in there singing songs. Right? We're a couple of lucky guys.”

He did not like Mr. Lofgren's reference to his mother's nature. Lofgren referred to her in the same way he had spoken of the maturity of his brother, as if it were a property he did not own but had the use of. And “a couple of lucky guys.” No, there was no luck he shared with Carl Lofgren. His luck was his own. He wanted to put his hand over Lofgren's face and twist it with all his might.

He could not do that. He felt how what had happened to him had him, now. Maybe for the rest of his life. He could never do anything freaky, now. It would be on him if he did, his own bad luck. Assuming what had happened to him in the summer didn't come back. Assuming he could choose.

Mr. Lofgren seemed to want to talk to him. “You know she tried to get the week off because you were coming home. They wouldn't give it to her.”

“Why doesn't she just tell them where to stuff it? Why doesn't she quit?”

“Are you seriously asking that question?”

“Yeah, seriously I seriously am.”

Mr. Lofgren put his chin on his arms on the table and closed his eyes. Almost. Gabe saw them move behind the blond eyelashes. It seemed to him that Mr. Lofgren did not absolutely want to, but might be going to make him pay for something. Mr. Lofgren scratched his chin back and forth on his arm, mowing down the long, tangled blond hairs with it. “If she quit,” he said finally, “she would have no medical coverage.”

“So? She's not sick.”

Mr. Lofgren went on stroking his arm with his chin. “No, she's not.” His blue eyes were open and he was looking at Gabe. His lips had a darker outline, like the baby's. He did not look like
anyone Gabe knew. He looked like somebody who might be looking at you through a keyhole, who would pretend later he had not been there.

“Oh I get it,” Gabe said.

 

CHRIS'S NEW HOUSE was out in the stretch of countryside between Seattle and Tacoma, down past the airport.

All day Gabe had been hearing jets rumble down the long channel of sky to Sea-Tac. Other than that it was quiet, countrified. His mother had driven him down early, before she went to work. He had thought he was spending the night but it turned out, as Chris's mother explained to his mother in the doorway, that Chris had a date and the overnight wouldn't work this time. He threw his duffel bag into the back seat with the baby. “Gabe,” his mother said, getting back in the car. It was a question.

“It's all right,” he said. “I don't care.”

Chris had not said anything all day about a date. As recently as last summer he had never called a girl. Gabe didn't want to bring it up unless Chris did. They listened to Pearl Jam half the day, so Chris could pick out the chords. He didn't play his acoustic any more, he had a Strat, now, with a big amp.

Before she left for her appointment with his teacher Chris's mother came down to the basement every half hour or so to check on them. Once Katie looked in, without greeting Gabe. She kept her eyes on him, though, while Chris was telling her to leave. She had changed. Even though she was eleven and supposed to be in love with her horse she had on lipstick and threw her hip against the doorframe. Without really grinning she seemed to be going over something funny in her mind. “Quit staring!” Chris told her, and she gave him the finger.

“Come on upstairs, Katie.” Chris's mother came down with root beer and popcorn. She told them what was in the refrigerator for
lunch. Once she looked in when they were lying on their backs on the floor lip-synching. That time she said, “Christopher.” Once she gave Gabe a thumbs-up sign. “You are looking so
good
,” she said. “Now, Gabe, you make sure Chris keeps track of Katie.”

“‘
I'm still alive,
'” they sang with the CD. “‘
Son, she said. Have I got a little story for you.
'”

“So how come you didn't bring your guitar?” Chris said.

“Oh, my guitar. I told my mom to sell it.”

“And she did? She
sold
it?”

“Well, I don't know. I didn't really look for it. I've only been home a day. It might be around somewhere.”

“No, man, I don't think your mom would sell your guitar. I've got two guys out here I'm playing with. Got a great bass, a kid that can sing. And a kid just down the road who plays drums, but he's not so hot.”

“So you shoulda told me to bring my guitar.”

“You always brought it, how was I supposed to know? Come on, let's go out.”

Now it was late afternoon, cloudy. A wind caught them on the hill behind the house as they climbed a gate. The hillside had been in shade all day and there was still frost on the grass. The soles of his shoes made prints on the frost. Chris wanted to show him a horse. Not Katie's horse—another horse occupying the same field, a draft horse that was supposed to impress him. “It'll come right over,” Chris said. “Unlike Katie's horse. They're going to sell that fucker. She can't even catch it.”

“So why'd you move out here? I thought you guys changed your mind.”

“Oh, my dad was like, “‘They got a metal detector!' At school. Stuff was going on. A kid got locked in his locker, and nobody knew and he was in there for—”

“Wait, forget it.”

“In PE, somebody had a gun. He turned it in to Lofgren. I guess you didn't get news. Did you have TV?”

“We had TV. We didn't get
Seattle
news, dickhead. Of which my mom says there never is any.”

“Just quoting your mom, huh.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you don't like it?” With one hand he grabbed Chris by the throat. Chris's eyes went wild when he did this.

He let go, fast. “Hey, man.” He made his hand into a mike. “Like, ‘
My mama said . . . na na na na . . . said I told you never, I told you never never never never . . . nyaaahhh
!'”

Chris laughed loudly and socked him on the arm as they resumed walking. The grass crunched. “There!” Chris said, pointing.

The horse had risen over the far hill and was plodding downhill towards them. It did not look as big as all that. But as it drew nearer Gabe saw that it was big. It was a mottled gray color, with a light-colored tail that blew to the side like a skirt. It got close enough for him to see tufts of hair in its ears and hear it blowing its breath out in sighs. It swung its head to one side in a way that suggested it was not deliberately arriving at the place where they were. Then it came on, picking up each hoof like a bucket of rock but putting it down tenderly, like a bare foot.

“He's a Percheron. He's old.” The horse's flat, pursy nose and hanging lip did have an old, preoccupied, crafty look.

The horse began dipping its heavy head and throwing it back up in a belligerent way. “You can pet him. Here, I brought him an apple. That's what he likes.” The horse lowered its head, reaching with its upper lip after the apple.

Gabe put his hand on the forehead. It felt like a canvas bag full of pipes. With two fingers he felt right into the interior of the indentation above the eye, that pumped in and out as the horse chewed. He felt the bones clashing inside. The eye rolled.
It looked out with no curiosity, just a stupid, but not entirely stupid, patience. When the eye rolled again he removed his fingers.

Close under the jaw the hair was stiff, and then too there were long, fine hairs soft as cobweb coming off the great bone fenders of the jaw, between which he could have fitted his own head if he stood right against the neck.

“This is a big horse.”

“He's big. I told you. And this isn't even the biggest breed. Man, I can't see a horse any bigger than this.”

“This is an elephant.”

“A mammoth.”

Gabe could feel the approach of excitement. It was coming on the heels of his relief that the horse actually was huge. His reaction had not disappointed Chris, with whom things seemed normal, finally.

“I'd say this horse is from another planet,” he said in a deep radio voice that caused the horse to turn its head sideways and look at him out of the back of its eye.

“Watch out,” Chris said. “There's his teeth! Look at those mothers. He looks like he's gonna take a bite outa you.”

The horse had dropped its jaw open as if it were yawning, but it was not yawning; it had stiffened its tongue and elevated its lip, exposing pink gum and shockingly long yellow buckteeth with gaps between them that made Gabe laugh. “Does he bite?” But he didn't move out of the way, and the horse angled its head in under his arm. It bit him. It actually bit him. It pressed the big teeth in, low in his side. The teeth went in only so far, just a pressure really, his jacket and flesh being compressed. But it hurt. It was an uncomfortable squeezing of his side and it hurt.

“Hey! Hey man! Did that hurt? Did he
bite
you?”

“Yeah. Sorta.” Gabe just stood there, feeling around inside his
jacket, even though the horse could be getting ready to bite him again.

“He never did
that
before,” Chris said.

The horse propped its hoof and stood with them as if nothing had happened, blowing its breath on the frosty air, dull and patient. It shifted its weight ponderously, in a satisfied way. But then the eye rolled again in Gabe's direction and he knew that it was not stupid, it knew it had bitten him. It was old, old in experience of humans. It had picked him and not Chris.

“He didn't hurt me,” he said. He looked into the horse's near eye. If Chris had not been there he would have spoken to it.
You bit me
.
OK. All right. Tell me why you bit me.

A jet rumbled above the clouds, coming lower, grinding on the air. He turned to Chris and saw him tying the hood of his sweatshirt, and shook off the feeling that Chris was somewhere else, not in the same field where he and the horse were standing. If you placed a feeling right away, you were its master.

Chris said something to him, and when he looked again, seconds later it seemed, Chris had started across the field to the fence. He heard Chris yelling for him but he put off answering and looked up, turning in a circle as he listened for the plane's engines. A wind was scattering the clouds. The horse eased back the pink edges of its nostrils and blew on him.

He ducked under its neck and stood on the other side, putting the plane behind him. The horse lowered its head and shook it from side to side like somebody shaking a gallon of paint. The eye rolled. “Gonna do it again? Hey, you think I care? Nah. I'm forgiving.” He got hold of the head by both jaws. “Go right ahead. Do it.”

He had broken into a sweat under his jacket and the air had found his damp skin. With the chill on his skin he felt good. He felt prepared.

It was nothing to him if a horse bit him, it was nothing to him
if a horse was to pick him up in its jaws. He could forgive a horse. He already had. He could forgive anybody and anything.

You could still hear the turbines of the plane. Now the horse chose not to bite him, not even to object as he held onto the head and peered into the dark, opaque eye. It was possible the plane, a quarter-inch thing, would cross the eye with its load of invisible passengers. If it did, and the passengers were lucky, he would see it. When they landed, not a one of them would know what had returned them to Earth.